


^ .3 



J 



pH8^ 



The UsDrpatious of tlie Federal OoTernment 

'•'HE DANGERS OF CENTRALIZATION. 

E 458 




SPEECH 



OF 



HON. ROBMT C. HUTCHINGS 



OF NEW^ YORK. 



ON THE GOYERNOE'S ANNUAL MESSAGE, 



DELIYEEED IN THE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE 

OF NEW YOEK, 



February, 26th, 1863. 



ALBANY: 

ATLAS & ARGUS PRINT. 

1863. 



.- -A 






^^ 



SPEECH. 



The House being in Committee of the Whole on '. 
the annual Message of the Governor, Mr. Htjtch- 
IKGS obtained the floor, and said : 

Mr. Chairman — I solicit the attention of the 
members of the Committee to the views which I 
desire to present, upon the Federal and State rela- 
tions as treated of in the Message of his Excellency 
the Governor. I solicit their respectful attention 
for the reason that I am aware that my views will 
not be in consonance with those entertained by the 
Republican members, who constitute an equality of 
this house, and I am not certain that they will re- 
ceive the approval of all of my political colleagues. 
But however you may differ with me, award me the 
credit of expressing views which are based upon the 
honest convictions of my judgment and conscience. 
We have, as it has been expressed, passed the mili- 
tary, and we are now approaching the intellectual 
epoch of the revolution. The time is near when 
men will be permitted to investigate its causes 
and to present their opinions upon the policy 
of the administration without being charged 
with treason, and called by the vilest names which 
party malignity can conceive. I trust that 
tha day is not distant when the standard of patriot- 
ism will not be the changing and imbecile policy of 
the administration, but the ancient standard — 
obedience to the mandates of the Constitution and 
laws, based upon the Constitution, by both the North 
and South. And when that day arrives, men will 
be permitted to exclaim in the words which the ven- 
erable and politic Cardinal of France uttered to his 
youthful and impetuous page : " Take away the 
sword. States can be saved without it 1" To 
those, and there are some in this house, who will 
not award me the credit of honesty of conviction, 
and who denounce all those who differ with them as 
to the policy of the war, for disloyalty and sedi- 
tion, I would address the words of Charles Fox, 
the great parliam-^ntary orator of England, when 
his country was involved in a war with France, and 
to the policy of which he was opposed: "Say at 
once that a free Constitution is no longer suiiable 
to us; say at once, in a manner, that upon an am- 
ple review of the state of the world, a free Consti- 
tution is not fit for you ; conduct yourselves at once 
as the Senators of Denmark ; lay down your free<'om, 
and acknowledge and accept of despotism. But do 
not shock the . understandings and feelings of man- 



kind by telling the world that you are free, — by 
telling me that if, for the purpose of expressing my 
sense of the public administration of this country, 
of the calamities which this war has occasioned, 
I state a grievance, or make any declaration of my 
sentiments in a manner that may be thought sedi- 
tions, I am to be subjected to penalties hitherto 
unknown to the law. Did ever a free people meet 
so? Did ever a free state exist so?" The day 
must come — I believe it to be very near — when wa 
must surrender our partisan prejudices, and investi- 
gate in the coolness of reason, and in the calmness 
of peace, the causes of this war, and the remedies 
for its consequent disasters — when we must decide 
upon the nature of the politj' under which we are to 
live as a people, whether it shall be one, based as 
ourffithers made it, upon local sovereignty, or of a 
centralized and consolidated form. 

I purpose, sir, to trace the causes of the reyolu- 
tion if which this country is now the scenic theatre, 
and to state to what principles of government those 
who now shape the policy, and guide the destinies of 
the country must return, if they desire a restoration 
or even a reconstruction of the Union, and an hon- 
orable peace. I intend moreover to speak of this 
revolution in the full estima< on of its proportions. 
It "aas been too long the standard of "loyalty" to 
nnder-estimate it, and to speak confidently of its 
certain and speedy overthrow. 

THIS IS A REVOLUTION. 

The time is appropriate for reason. At the com- 
mencement of this revolution, for that which was 
cal'ed a rebellion at the outset, has since expanded 
into the proportions and reached the majesty of a 
revolution, grander and vaster than history records, 
reason was dethroned, and enthusiasm, which is bas- 
ed on unreason, ruled not only the fickle and un- 
thinking multitude, but the councils of the legisla- 
tors and administrators of the government, who 
should never be governed by enthusiasm or the 
clamors of the populace, but only by reason. This 
is a revolution — not a rebellion. The latter be- 
come revolutions when based upon a great popular 
belief of government, and when the ends reached 
for are new bases and forms of polities. 
I The rebellions of modern times are scarcely remem- 
I bered by us in name, and their causes were too 
trivial to merit remembrance, for they were, as re- 
bellions are, but the transient mutterings of dissat- 



4 



isfaotion of a portion of the people — then, general- 
ly,, the interposition of armed forced, a c infest of 
short duration, and final quiet. But revolutions 
are hased upon the great popular belief, whatever 
that belief may be, though it is generally just and 
triumphant, and which cannot be overcome 07cly by 
legions of armed men and parks of artillery, but 
need the prudence, wisdom and skill of statesman- 
ship. 

This revolution will rank in history with those 
of 1688 of England, and 1789 of France, and 
will be known as that of the "Revolution of the 
States." Like those, it is alleged by its origina- 
tors, to be founded upon a great popular principle 
of government, and in addition to that, upon con- 
stitutional and statutory assertions of government. 
The popular principle is the same — the general 
cause of all great revolutions — opposilion to cen- 
tralization in government, whioh the people of the 
South claimed had, under our system, become fed- 
eral despotism, as under a mouarchy it is regal des- 
potism. I desire the overthrow of this revolution, 
and the restoration of the Union, but I do not de- 
sire the restoration of the mere forms of the Union, 
without its soul — I cannot support that policy of 
the administration, as evinced in its measures, 
which in their triumph, destroys all State sovereign- 
ty and personal rights at the North — which secures 
the social equality of the Negro and destroys the 
political freedom of the White race at the North 
as well as at the South. I am no apologist for the 
constitutional right of secession, but I must say, 
upon my honest convictions, that upon the triumph 
or failure of the policy of the administration, 
hinges not merely the /destinies of the Southern 
States, but the fate of the Northern States and the 
future nature of the central government. In the 
success of its measures, unconstitutional, despotic 
and usurping, I behold the perpetual loss of "the 
Union as it was." 

There is but one way by which the revolution can 
be overthrown, and the "Union as it was" restored, 
and that is by the triumph of the principle upon 
"which the union of the States rests, and which is al- 
leged to be also the principle upon which the revo- 
lution was originated. 

It is the part of the patriotic and wise, who would 
overthro.y this revolution, and who desire the re- 
storation of the Union, and who would preserve the 
vital principle of that Union, and in the recognition 
of which in the past by the executive agents of the 
government in the persons of the long and illustri- 
ous line of Democratic Presidents was able to pre- 
serve it, and in the violation of which are embrac- 
ed all those aggressions on sovereign and domestic 
rights which are alleged to be the cause of this war 
— by expression and action in the legislatures of the 
Northern States and in Congress, to guide this re- 
volution in its furlher career, to assuage its fury, 
to cripple its march, and finally to conquer it, by the 
supremacy of the principle upon which it is based 
— the "Equality of the States." When the peo- 
ple of the North return to their ancient belief in 
this doctrine, they will conquer the revolution, and 
will restore the Uuion, and also preserve the sov- 
ereign riglits of their respective States and their 
personal liberties. 

To conquer the revolution in this way, for it can 
rcver be overcome only by the war measures of the 
imbecile administration of Abraham Lincoln, nor can 
the Union of old, made and existing by the "con- 
sent of the States," be restored in its life, however 
its form may be preserved, by the mere "coercion of 
arms," we must study the causes of the former and 
the nature of the latter. Partisans cannot study them 



if the shadow of a political platform is looming up 
before them. Only those who believe that party 
creed is subordiuate to country, and are governed 
more by fealty to the Constitution than mere blind 
consistency to political ritual, and servile approval 
of federal usurpation are capable and worthy of this 
great work. 

It has for t'ho last two years been considered an 
evidence of patriotism to be the loudest mouthed in 
denunciation of the action of the Southern States. 
Let us however see if the Northern States have 
not been partially guilty in originating this revolu- 
tion, by direct and open violation of, or by their 
omission to execute the mandates of the Constitu- 
tion. 

THE ORGANIZATION CF THE REPUBLICAN 

PAllTY WAS A CRIME AGAINST THE 

ISTATES 

The organization of the Republican party, and 
the spirit with which it was, and is still imbued, 
and which existed long before its formal birth, was 
one of the causes — was the great cause of this war! 

Its organization was a crime against the States. 

In this text is embraced the jjulitical history of 
the country, for the doctrines of that party were 
professed and the creed of its "apostles, prophets 
and guides" was recited long before the day of its 
official birth, when it was christened with its dis- 
tinctive name, which has been the synonym of vic- 
tory and dominance in the free States for nearly a 
decade. Its natural birth was before the throes of 
Kansas — it antedates the "Repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise." It was born — the spirit of the Re- 
publican party — the infusing spirit of the "Typhon 
of revolution'-' which is now raging over the laud, in 
the days immediately succeeding the Convention of 
the States whiih framed the Constitution, as soon 
as selfish interest, sectional jealousy, and commer- 
cial rapacity were substituted for the elements of 
conciliation, liberality and patriotism which called 
the Union into being. We can trace that spirit 
through the whole histdry of our country from that 
time to the present — the si)irit which animated the 
Republican party in its struggles for ascendancy, 
and which now animates it in its struggles for ab- 
solute power — that party which, by its promises and 
professions before, and its action after triumph was 
the prominent cause of the secession of the Southern 
States. John C. Calhoun said in 1837, when 
"abolition petitions were first presented to Congress, 
as follows : "As widely as this incendiary spirit has 
spread, it has not yet infected this body, or the 
great mass of the intelligent and business portion 
of the North; but unless it be si)ecdily stopped, it 
will spread and work upward till it brings the two 
great sections of the Union into deadly conflict." — 
The secession of the Southern States, though it was 
not justified by any constitutional right, was natural, 
and had been thixatened if the Republican party, 
with its distinctive creed of antagonism to the in- 
stitutions of those States, should succeed. The 
creed of that jiarty was in bold violation — not only 
of the compromises upon which the Union w«8 
founded, but of the plain and written provisions of 
the Constitution. 

The Democratic party, notwithstanding the enthu- 
siasm, energy and magnanimity which it has evinc- 
ed in its support of the government since the seces- 
sion of the Southern States, has not forgotten, and 
will not forget, that the Republican party by its 
professions before and by its acts after its triumph, 
was the great oause of the war. 

The Union, if not broken, is inoperative by its 
.agent — the common agent of the States for the pur- 



poses of the Union. In seeking for the means by 
which the States can he so united as to acknowledge 
again the federal government as their agent for 
the common welfare, and those other objects for 
which it was established, we are compelled to study 
the nature of that Union and the bases upon whicn 
it rests. We can then decide as to the justice of 
the grievances of the Southern States, and whether 
war alone can restore the Union. 

THE UNION UPON THE CONSTITUTION. 
Little more than seventy years ago, the Union 
■was established. It was called the "United States 
of America." It was the successor of those Unions 
which had existed before on this continent, of the 
colonies under the protection and rule of England, 
but it was the immediate successor of that which, 
under the "Articles of Confederation" had carried 
us through the great struggle for our "chartered 
rights, for English liberties, for the cause of Al- 
gernon Sydney and John Hampden — for t'-ial by 
jury, the Magna Charta and Habeas Corpus"' — all 
embodied and CDndensed in the Anglo-Saxon prin- 
ciples of local self-government and personal liberty 
— that Union, which, in its formation, without 
and against the armed will of the King and parlia- 
ment redeclared, and confirmed by the formal act 
of the colonies in their transformation into inde- 
pendent and sovereign States, the great assertion of 
the "Declaration of Independence" — that "Grov- 
ernments derive their just powers from the consent 
of the governed." The change from the Union 
under the "Articles of Confederation" to that un- 
der the Constitution, was not to have a centralized, 
consolidated government, in which the ancient and I 
hitherto undenied local sovereignty of the respective 
States was to be sacrificed. The stern devotion to 
State sovereignty and jealousy of an extreme cen- 
tral power was as great then as when the people 
threw off the rule of England and made the govern- 
ment, under the "Articles of Confederation." This 
is evidenced by the tardiness of the States, even 
when they were conscious of the necessity of a re- 
Tision of that system, to consent to a convention of 
the States to discuss and decide — not upon a new 
method, which was not then generally intended — 
but only upon a revision. The necessity for a re- 
vision, but wh ch became a change of the system 
of the government, was the imbecile nature ef the 
polity which, while it conferred enumerated func- 
tions upon the central government, failed to bestow 
authority upon Congress to execute them. The ne- 
cessity is concisely expressed in the language of 
John Quincy Adams : "The system was about to 
dissolve in its own imbecility — impotence in nego- 
tiation abroad — domestic insurrection at home, were 
on the point of bearing to a dishonorable grave the 
proclamation of a government founded on the rights 
of man." 

The Union, based on the Constitution, was the 
successor of the old system. What is that Consti- 
tution? I do not ask what the Union is, for with- 
out the Constitution there can be no Union. 

I ask what that Constitution is, for, as I 
believe, an incorrect conception and violation of it 
by a sectional party of the North — the organized 
result of sectional teachings at the North, for many 
years — almost as many years as the age of that 
Constitution, has involved us in this war. I ask 
what that Constitution is, for unless we become im- 
bued with the spirit of its ordaining preamble, and 
study the great principle embodied in the last 
amendment to it, made by the first (^^gress, and 
respect and obey the mandates of that sacred in- 
strument we can never — no, never restore the Union, 



as it was created upon that Constitution. It is a 
contract ("the adjective federal is derived from the 
Latin word foedu'i, a contract") made and en- 
entered into by sovereign States, acting by their 
respective delegates — from States which had from 
the time they threw off the royal authority, been 
sovereign States — who were under no compulsion to 
make the contract, but who voluntarily and delib- 
erately broke the "Articles of Confederation" and 
seceded from the government under those articles, 
as they had previously declared themselves absolv- 
ed from the rule of Great Britain. The latter was 
an armed revolution justified by success. The 
former was a political revolution justified by its 
subsequent confirmation by the States. That Con- 
stitution delegated certain defined powers, which 
are few, and specifically enumerated, to the federal 
government, \\ith the power to execute them, and 
so far as those powers were granted and reached, 
the States surrendered their former sovereignties — 
but no further. All otherinherent powers, possessed 
and enjoyed by the States, and not granted among 
those enumerated, were reserved by the States, 
sovereign yet as to thenr. All those sovereign pow- 
ers which we find specifically defined in the Consti- 
tutions of the several States^ as possessed by them, 
and those which are not defined, but which had been 
possessed and enjoyed by them frum usage, prece- 
dent and upon the common law of England, were re- 
served by them. Their sovereignty cannot be more 
concise!}' and yet comprehensively expressed than 
in the words of the amendment of the tirsl Congress : 
"The powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constit-ution nor prohibited by it to the States, 
are reserved to the States respectively or to the 
people." The federal government is, as it has been 
well expressed "an agreement which comes between 
anarchy and despotism, — a confederation by which 
one supreme government makes uniform laws (so far 
as it has delegated powers) and secures internation- 
al intercouse between thirty-one diSerent nations 
without the complexities of an endless amount of 
treaties and conventions." The federal government 
was created by the States as the central and com- 
mon agent of those powers which thej' had surren- 
dered. It was the common agent to enact and exe- 
cute the uniform laws so far as it was delegated 
with power, which were to regulate the intercourse 
between the States, and control the difficulties and 
disputes which might arise between them from their 
diii'erent and antagonistic interests, aud protect 
their respective domestic institutions and property. 
It was the common agent which represented them 
abroad as a nation, and not as different States. As 
an agent, it had only t'lat power with which it had 
been invested bj' its creator. The proviuonsof the 
Constitution are plain as to the powers of the fed- 
eral government. They are defined with almost 
mathematical precision. Its defenses are as seem- 
ingly impregnable, as any usurpations on its pa¥t of 
the reserved and sovereign rignts of the Stales are 
apparently impossible. No one can read that Jon- 
stitution, unless he be a bigoted partisan, who 
places his political creed — the shibboleth of the 
election hour — above that sacred covenant, who can 
fail to perceive that the objects of the Union, aud 
the defenses of the States have been overthrown 
during the last few years. How marked by almost 
! mathematical precision as to the objects and powers 
} of the federal government are its provisions from 
] the preamble in which are declared its objects: 
I "We the people of the United States, in order to 
I form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure 
I domestic tranquility, provide for the common de- 
1 fcnscj promote the general welfare, and secure the 



blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, 
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the 
United States of America'" — to the last amendment 
of the first Congress, and without which New York 
State would never have approved it — "The power* 
not delegated to the United States by the Constitu- 
tion, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserv- 
ed to the States respectively or to the people." In 
the ordaining preamble are contained the purposes 
of the Union. In this, the last amendment of the 
first Congress, which met in the city of New York, 
under the administration of George Washington is 
contained the defenses of the States. Who per- 
verted those purposes of the Union, and who over- 
threw those defenses of the States, and the nature 
of the policy by which the Union can be restored in 
the spirit of the ordaining preamble of the Consti- 
tution, and with it the reestablishment of the de- 
fenses of the States, I shall discuss hereafter. 

THE UNION UPON COMPROMISES. 
The Constitution was moreover conceived and 
born in the spirit of compromise. This may be an 
unhappy word. In the resolutions of partisan as- 
semblies, compromise and treason are designated as 
synonymous words. But I am not ashamed even in 
the din of battle to say that when the day arrives, 
•which i' certain to arrive, when the Union can bo 
restored by wise compromise of the differences which 
exist, I prefer to restore the Union by that policy — 
the policy which brought the Union into being — 
than by the subjugation and extermination of cm. 
half of our own race, and the colonization of their 
States by ourselves — the three methods to "restore 
the Union " which have been avowed by members 
of the Republican party on this floor. It is a writ- 
ten compromise. It is a compromise between men 
of different parent races, creeds, educations and 
social conditions — of their thoughts, ideas, social 
and political theories. The Puritan in religion and 
Roundhead in politics of New England, with Lis 
bigotry of belief, which had become the despotism 
of religious idea, whose narrow mind could only 
conceive a pure civil policy of a theocratic natuie — 
the sturdy Dutchman of thatraca which settled the 
southern portion of our State, and which can proud- 
ly and truthfully boast above all others that their 
race was the "originator of modern liberty in 
Europe," the Catholic caviller of Maryland and 
the Episcopalian cavalier of Virginia, who boasted 
that they were descendants of that spirited 
race which crossed the English channel from the 
white cliffs of Normandy to England, and the b'.uod 
which couroed through their veins -.^as " unstained 
by that of any Saxon churl" and the Huguenots 
of the Carolinas — here upon the altar of eo-^- 
stitutional liberty sacrificed their distinctive le- 
ligions, political and social ideas. It was a com- 
promise of religious belief, which threw its mantle 
of constitutional protection and equality over all 
lorms. It placed religious and also moral belief 
outside of the political system. I am particular 
in stating this, for the great assertion which has 
never risen to the dignity of an argument of the 
■writers and orators of Republican party before its 
triumph, .vas the immorality and irreligion of the 
institution of slavery. And the defence of the 
present policy of this war, which is declared by 
those who have at least apparent ^ut lority to 
speak for the administration, is not simply the "re- 
storation of the Union as it was," but the recon- 
struction of it upon a purer and more moral basis — 
by the destruction of slavery, and as pertinently 
expressed in their shibboleth — " No compromise 
■with Blavery !" They, like a distinguished Senator 



of the upper House, cite from the writings and 
speeches of our ancestors. I concede the correct- 
ness of their citations, but the authors of them, 
whether of the North or of the South, sacrificed 
their personal objections — they compromised their 
private prejudices and scruples upon the altar of 
the Union. It was a compromise between the po- 
litical theories-of the different races. I award to 
New England much credit for the magnanimous 
sacrifice of her preferences and prejudices in the 
great and difficult work of framing the Constitution, 
ye' history will not permit me to concede that she 
conceived the great principle upon which it was 
bused. That t:,reat principle was in the immortal 
assertion of the Declaration of Independence — that 
" ill men were created free and equal." It was 
one of those who boasted that they were the descen- 
dents of the cavaliers of Prince Rupert — the "curl- 
•^'I darlings" of Charles the First, who met and were 
shivered by the stern Irunsidts on Marston moor, 
who wrote that immortal declaration of the politi- 
oa' equality nf white men. It was not the Puritan 
w'.io bclievd that the "earth, and the fullness 
thereof was the Lord's and his saints, and that he 
vas one of his saints," and that all goodness, 'right- 
eousness and wisdom was in him and in his belief, 
but one of the "aristocrats" — a member of tho 
"slave oligarchy" as it was called at that time as 
now, was the champion of Democracy? This great 
principle — the great assertion of the 18th century 
— the first formal declaration of it by a people, but 
ftr which men had vaguely contended, but never 
fully conceived, hedged in and smothered by the 
hereditary and even popular ideas of privilege of 
rank and caste — a slight gleam of which but eman- 
ates from Magna Charta, clouded and scarce!}' dis- 
tinguishable by the throng of the nobles who stood 
around its declaration by the King, with swords in 
their hands, to crush the people as well as the King, 
the two foes of feudal and aristocratic privilege, 
was conceived not in some conventicle on the sterile 
hills of New England, but on the plantation of 
Thos. Jefi'erson.* It was the slave institution which 
gave conception to the thought which resolved it- 
self into that immortal declaration. The concep- 
tion of such an idea by the Puritan was impossible 
in the pride of his religious intolerance and social 
caste, and who believed himself superior to other 
men. It was the Virginian living in a state 
whore he was surrounded by a race entirely 
strange and different from his own, and beholding 
every day its physical, mental and social inferiori- 
ty, .vho conceived the idea, notwithstanding his ar- 
istocratic prejudices, that Lis white neighbor, 
though his abode might be in a hovel, while he liv- 
ed on the m.inorial estate, and was possessed of all 
the necessities and luxuries that wealth could be- 
stow, was a member of the same great Caucasian 
race as himself, and was created like him "free 
and equal." In that assertioUj^ as essentially re- 
produced in the Constitution — in the equality of all 
men — there was a compromise of social caste in 
which the superiority of any rank or class was ob- 
literated, as there was a political equality of the 
States, whatever might be the nature of their do- 
mestic institutions. The slave institution, with ♦ 
its attendant evils, was at the time of the for- 
mation of the Constitution, distasteful to many of 
the people of New England, as i: is now. Their 
sentiments were avowed in the debates of that con- 
vention. But they were represented by noble and 

•This id^ is ably developed by Dr Van Evrie, 
of New York, Editor of tho Caucasion, in one of his 
XPAuj able worki. 



patriotic men like Ellsworth and Sherman, at 
have jugt and liberal men now who carry boldly and 
fearlessly the banner of the Constitution, and who 
sacrificed their prejudices for the consummation of 
their great project — the Union upon the broad basis 
of non-intervention with the domestic institutions 
of the States. 

THE GREAT COMPROMISE. 

It was also a compromise — the great (ompromiie 
— between material interests, the commercial and 
agricultural, or slave interests. It was the great 
compromise, which embraces all the others, but all 
of which have been broken. The assumsd purer 
religion and more perfect morality of the North 
have been the weapons used in the pulpit and press, 
the legislature and Congress, and even on the judi- 
cial bench, to violate the great compromise between 
the commercial interests of the maritime States of 
the North and the agricultural interests of the slave 
States of the South. The antagonism between the 
different interests of the States, at the time of the 
Constitutional Convention, were created from geo- 
graphical, climatic and soil differences. The section 
west of the Susquehannah and south of the Ohio 
fljmposed the great slave holding section, though in 
the north-west portion it was but thinly settled. 
Slavery existed in all of the States, except one, 
but in some to a very limited degree. In the north- 
ern and eastern sections, the institution was rapidly 
decreasing on account of the expense incurred in 
its support, and the failure of an equivalent for 
slave labor. It was decreasing also in obedience to 
the laws of soil and climate — the only just and cer- 
tain abolition agents. But it had become a great 
element in the domestic ecocomy of the southern 
States, for it is but a domestic institution, outside 
of the political system, as its morality is outsid* 
the control of the federal Constitution. The pecu- 
liar products which the slave returned to his master 
were many per cent above the expense incurred in 
his subsistence, while the results of his labor in the 
northern States was less than his support. Tobao- 
eo had already become a staple of the South. Cot- 
ton was already a young prince, soon to wear the 
insignia of royalty. This slave institution, from its 
peculiar nature, needed to be fostered and protect- 
ed. Those States, which were greatly interested 
in it, were not willing to form the Constitution and 
to become parties to the proposed Union, unless their 
ancient and hitherto undenied rights were guaran- 
teed to them, and new and stronger safeguards were 
thrown around the institution of slavery. 

Slavery could never be a permanent institution in 
the New England States, because they were not 
agricultural. Negro slavery is an important ele- 
ment only in agriculture, for the negro slave has not 
and never will, from his mental inleriority, reach a 
higher grade than the menial-agriculturist. Even 
now, with all the inventions to assist in the devel- 
opment of the soil, we find, it has been remarked, 
bat few at the North, who may be denoted by that 
appellation originally applied to the feudal lords of 
fertile and Central Europe, and which may be ap- 
propriately applied to the great planters of the 
Sonth — the adscripli glebat — the tenants of the 

BOll. 

There were two other pursuits in which the men 
of New England could derive richer and more rapid 
returns to their investments. The people of the 
Korth had years before the establishment of the 
federal Union, discovered, as I have stated, that 
•lavery was a profitless institution, not only because 
the negro race oguld not thrive in hor cold climate, 



but alio because agriculture wag a profitless occu- 
pation. They had commenced to be a. navigating 
people, and were promising to be like the ancient 
Phoenicians — "the people of the waters and the 
masters of the sea." The bleak and aterilo hills of 
New England taught her sons that not in tho soil 
must they essay to reap their wealth, o. e^en to 
gain their livelihood ; but no less did her long and 
extended sea-coast, studded with magnificent har- 
bors, scooped out by nature from the rockt andhilli, 
with safe and capacious entrances to broi'^' \nyn in 
which might float in security the mercantile navies 
of the world, point out to them that their appro- 
priate mission was on the watery fields of commerce 
— on which to be the maritime carriers of the world. 

The beautiful science of physical geography showg 
to UB the laws by which the great Creator was gov- 
erned in forming the world, and the purposes of those 
laws — how each of the old continents has had its 
destined mission, or is now performing it, as each 
era has had its pecrliar phase and development of 
humanity — how from the contours and conforma- 
tions of continents, the dwellers on them have fol- 
lowed those pursuits, advanced in those paths, and 
filled their appropriate places, not according to their 
own volition as they have imagined, but in obedi- 
ence to the inexorable laws which he has placed 
upon the destinies of men as dwellers upon the dif- 
ferent continents or parts of them. He whose laws 
the philosopher beholds in "the tiny bubble whirl- 
ing on the surface of the brook," and looking above, 
sees '''repeated in the massive mechanics of the 
sky" has not neglected to give laws to the pursuits 
of men. He rules them by the elements of tho 
earth, the watdr and the air. The Puritan of New 
England must not in his pharisaical belief think 
that he by convictions of morality, religion, and 
justice abolished the institution of slavery. The 
agents which abolished it were the great natural 
elements and the laws of interest. 

To the already important commercial interests of 
New England was added the spirit of manufactur- 
ing industry. Until that time, the colonies had 
been dependant on the mills and manufaoturies of 
England. New England desired to be not only free 
from the old country, but to be also the manufac- 
turer for tl e States. She beheld the great markets 
open in the agricultural States. She had all the 
facilities for manufacturing — the ingenuity and in- 
dustry of her sons, unsurpassed motive powers on 
her rapid running streams, and a large and increas- 
ing population seeking their livelihood, which they 
were unable to gain from her sterile soil. To couq- 
pete in maritime commerce with Great Britain, and 
to build up her mercantile navy, she demanded spe- 
cial privileges and.protection, such as the taxing of 
foreign tonniige, and navigation acts, so that her 
ships would be selected by the importer in prefer- 
ence to those of other nations, especially England. 
And to build up her manufaoturies, and to protect 
them from foreign monopoly, and to permit them to 
compete at an advantage with the uiills of Lancar- 
shire and Manchester, she demanded the Imposition 
of duties on foreign goods. These demands were 
made by New England as the sine qua non of her 
becoming a party to the Union. 

The Southern States, or the slaveholding States, 
as I have before stated, as their condition of joining 
the Union, demanded the protection for their slave 
property. They had no capital embarked in com- 
merce or manufactories. They never expected to 
be commercial or manufacturing States. They 
were agricultural. They therefore desired free trade, 
j but were willing to surrender that great benefit, and 



8 



to grant protection to the peculiar interests of New 
England, provided their conditions of guarantees 
and protection to slave property were granted . The 
conditions of the two sections as to the protection of 
their great interests were engrafted in the Constitu- 
tion. They were the great co /(promise, ■wilhont 
which the Union would never have been created. — 
It is a historical compromise. Curtis in his mag- 
nificent history of the Constitution treats it as the 
great compromise which resulted in the successful 
termination of the labor of the Convention. Hildreth 
in his "History of the United States" writes of it 
in detail. Permit me to quote from him (vol. Ill 
p. 520): 

"Thus by an understandiDjr, or as Gonvernour Morrlj> 
called it, "a bargain", betweon the comraercial repreeen- 
tativeBoCtheNorihern tStates. and tbe delegates of Souih 
CarnliDa and Georgia, and in spile of the opposition of 
Maryland ami Viruinia, ihe unrestricted power of Con- 
grees to enact navigation laws wag conceded to the 
Northern nierchniils, and to the Carolina rice planters as 
an equivalent, twenty J ewrs continuance of the African 
slave trade. Thin was the third great coniiironiisu oi 
the Constitution. The other two were the coDceaPiOn 
to the smaller fctates of an equal reprcsenlatiou ii' the 
Senate, and, to the claveholdeis. the counting of Tbr-^e- 
flfth? of the slaves in determining the ratio of r.-preseu- 
tation If this third oompromiee dirtered from the other 
two by involving not merely a political but a niornl hmc- 
riflce, there was this partial compensation about it, lii at 
It was not permiinent, lilse the other, but expired at the 
end of twenty yeaie by its own limitation " 

This paragraph is but a feeble presentation of the 
"bargain" as it was called, but which wa-s a full 
and comprehensive compromise of the antagor-3tio 
interests of the different sections. I recommend to 
my Republican friends, the "sum and sub.nance" 
of whose argument has been the "policy of freedom" 
of those who framed the Constitution, to read care- 
fully the forty seventh chapter of the second volume 
of "Hildreth History of the United States," where 
they will find a full account of this great com- 
promise. They will there find a most violetit anti- 
slavery speech by Gonverneur Morris which has not 
been excelled in bitterness by any of thc4attcr-day 
apostles of the abolition crusades, and yet they will 
also find that he sacrificed all of his moral prejudices 
80 that the great bargain might be made, which re- 
sulted in the Union upon a constitutional comprom- 
ise. I have not the time to read that history to- 
night. I do not censure New England for making 
the condition of her becoming a party to the Union, 
the protection to her interests, but I denounce her 
for receiving the benefits of the compromise and re- 
fusing to respect the condition made by the South- 
ern States. Every speech made by a Kcpublicau 
member of this and the upper house has been in ths 
nature of an essay on the immdralitj' of slavery. — 
If they will turn to the pages of that history ^hich 
I have cited, they will there read, that their ances- 
tors surrendered their moral objections to slavery 
for the benefits granted by the Southern States to 
their commerce and manufactures. And as I have 
read the political history of the country I find tha' 
the South — whatever may be her position to-day — 
generally respected the compromise. Has the North 
been true to that compromise as to the slave pro- 
perty of the South? 

The contract of the Union is now broken — broken 
as the Republican party claims, by the secession of 
the Southern States. It was broken long before 
by the North refusing through her legislatures to 
respect the provisions of the covenant, and the 
armed resistance of the people to the federal gov- 
ernment when attempting to execute the mandates 
of the Constitution. In place of the "aggressions 
©f the South" — the shibboleth of the Republican 



party, I appeal to the politicnl history of the coun- 
try. I do not desire to apoligizc for the ihany er- 
lOrs coniraitted by the South. I can never be an 
apologist for the secession of the Southern Stat'S. 
They were ungenerous in leaving their allies in the 
North — the great Democracy — when they were de- 
feated. We had fought the battles of the Consti- 
tution for j'ears — we had borne the brunt and din 
of the contest, and they left us in the day of disas- 
ter and defeat. The doctrine of constitutional se- 
cession is one which does not receive my belief. — 
But we of the North are not guiltless. The day 
will come, when we must decide the contest in which 
we are now engaged by an honorable comprotnise, 
and we will hasten that result wheu we comprehend 
our errors of the past, and are willing to be just in 
the future. 

On the 4th day of March, 1861, the representa- 
tive and chief of a triumphant sectional party of the 
Northern States — those States a numerical majori- 
ty of those which constitute the Union — made a 
majority by the concessions, or at least by the fi- 
delity of the South to the great compromise, in the 
passige of the tariff acts for the benefit of the 
North, which had increased the industrial popula- 
tion of the latter from the old world, which class 
had settled in the territories and brought them into 
the Union as free States, joined to the repeated de- 
feats of the South to carry into those terri tori ties, 
the "common property of all the States," their 
slaves. I read that history in this conuection no 
further than to that historic dav when the chief of 
this sectional and revolutionary party — revolution- 
.ary because sectional — ascended the steps of that 
C£tpitol where, on so many previous occasions none 
other than the representatives of a conserved and 
unviolated nationality ascended, with the symbol.s 
of tnumph in the recorded greatness, triumph and 
glory of the Republic to encourage them on in the 
same anticipated path. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 

Through almost as many years as those of the 
Republic I trace the spirit of the Republican party 
in the steadfast and increasing purpo.se of a portion 
of the people of the North to commit aggressions on 
the rights of slave property. Longago — only a few 
j'ears after the adoption of the Constitution, were 
heard the croak ings of the ravens in the distant 
East. At first a little brood, but faintly heard and 
seen, but increasing in number with every quadru- 
ple of years, until they were plainly hesird and seen 
— black-winged in plumage and ominous in sound, 
intermingling with the joyful voices of the people 
their hoarse, discordant and doleful cries. This 
black brood — prolific as birds of ill-omen are — over- 
spread the Northern land. They were the forerun- 
■ler.s of war and carnage. From that early day to 
the present, 'here has been an increasing and con- 
stant abuse of the people of the South, in petitions 
to Congress, articles in newspapers and periodicals 
and sermons from the pulpit. Then the pestiferous 
agitators, becoming numerous, organized themselves 
into societies whose avowed object was the agitation 
of the question of slave-property. I'lance makes 
the boast that she is the only Christian nation that 
goes to war for an idea. We behold, as we study 
history, how the dynasty of a nation, through suc- 
cessive generations, and under dift'erent heads, like 
that frigid one of the Romanoffs of Russia, pursue 
one idea of destiny — how all things and circum- 
stances, all little diflerences of men, as well as 
great hostilities of nations, are moulded to the suc- 
cess of the one great object. So the Puritan ele- 
ment of New England, naturally one of organiza- 



9 



tion, lioni in no necessary rivalry, tag, from the 
earliest days, used the question of slavery as one to 
excite the moral and religiousprejudicesof the peo- 
ple of the Northeru States, for the purpose of the 
political degradation of the South, and the suprem- 
acy of the New England Stares. Uaving imbued 
the minds of the people of the North with a belief 
In the immorality and irreligion of slavery — that in 
it was the "sum of all villanies," it had no difficul- 
ty in using these true agencies of assault in the 
political world. And having thus systematically 
poisoned the minds of the people, it had but little 
difficulty in infusing them with the general Ifelief 
that the attempt of the slaveholding States to pre- 
serve and defend their constitutional rights, were 
"the agressions of the South." Under this politi- 
cal shibboleth, which never rose to the aignity of an 
argument, as it was destitute of logic as of fact, the 
battle of sectionalism was fought and won. In 
my opinion, from a study of the political history of 
the country, the so-called "aggressions of the 
South" or "slave power," as it is called, have been 
the attempts of the people of that section to preserve 
their rights of propertj' and "State sovereignty" 
over their domestic institutions. The policy of the 
South, at least before the present revolution, was 
defensive — only asking for a strict construction of 
the Constitution. I have not the time to review 
the great contests over the admission of States, re- 
cogniaing slave property, into the Union. Every 
contest is but a repetition of that over the admis- 
sion of Missouri, as to the position of the North. — 
For in the refusal of the Northern members of Con- 
gress to admit Missouri, unless she presented her- 
self as a "free State," that is unrecognizing in her 
constitution, the right of property in slaves, was the 
assertion of the principle of "intervention" as to 
the domestic institutions of a State by the federal 
government — a principle, the legitimate fruits of 
whose triumph are now apparent in the dethrone- 
ment of all State sovereignty in free as well as slave 
States. 

The domestic institutions of the Southern States 
have been overthrown. And the Northern States 
have been dethroned of their sovereignty, and the 
people of their personal panoplies. 

As the Republican party was defensive in its pro- 
fessions before it came into power, so it has been 
ag2;resdive since its attainment. As it was hypo- 
critical in its policy of "freedom" in a minority, so 
it has been bold and audacious in its tyrannies and 
usurpations and crimes in its majority. It was 
scarcely to be expected that a party, whose policy 
was aggressive, would after it had obtained power, 
even wlien danger threatened the Republic, relin- 
quish the attempted realization of those promises 
which were the elements of its success. Factions 
do not compromise. Their missions are not to 
preserve but to destroy liberty. The history of this 
party as exemplified since its triumph, may yet be 
written, if it is permitted to pursue its reckless 
course, in the fable of an ancient race, which tells 
ns that faction is the twin brother of liberty, who 
was born before the latter, and the only one of the 
two who is immortal. 

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY RESPONSIBLE FOR 
THE WAR. 

It is responsible for this war, unless it was crim- 
inal for it ti have sacrificed its creed. We remem- 
ber how after the election of Mr. Lincoln, the 
Southern States, by their representatives in Con- 
gress, were willing to remain in the Union, provid- 
ed they were guaranteed protection for their pro- 
perty, their prayer being that the Constitution, or 



at least the compromise resolutions of Mr. Critten- 
den, in which were less than their rights under the 
Constitution, should be the rule and guide of action 
— how Virginia, forgetting and forgiving, in her 
love for the Union, the raid of the Northern ma- 
rauders upon her soil, called the "Peace Congress" 
--how the legislatures of the northern States, includ- 
ing New York, who was as guilty, aye, more guilty 
than the others, because she was the greatest of 
them, when the country was on the verge of civil 
war, sent to that Congress men who believed in no 
Constitution, but only in the cr^;ed of a past politi- 
cal campaign, and how the peaceful and conciliat- 
ing propositions of the "Border States" were re- 
jected, undoubtedly by the consent, if not the in- 
fluence of the President. These events are all parts 
of the record of this Administration which will be 
reviewed in truth by the historian. We can all re- 
call vividly, as though it were but yesterday, the 
strange scene which the North presented when the 
news flashed over the wires of the fall of Sumpter. 
Never was there a sublimer scene witnessed — never 
was there a grander pageant in the history of the 
world than the apotheosis of the symbol of the 
Union. And never was there such a dethronement 
of memory, and of reason by the people in their for- 
getfulness of the history of the Republican party, 
its sectional principles and aggressive creed, and of 
its stern fanaticism in refusing to grant the slight- 
est guarantees of constitutional justice or even 
equity. 

There was nothing strange in the enthusiasm 
which took the place of memory and reason, for a 
nation's flag, from the time when Palamedes of 
ArgoB "formed the first systematic line of battle," 
representing its position and distinguishing it in 
contest, has been, whatever may been its form, 
however rough in outline and poor in decoration or 
of the finest embroidery, the object of veneration 
and devotion like the symbol — the "two transverse 
lines" — of our holy religion. 

I had the honor to be at that time a member of 
the Legislature of this State. I voted for the ap- 
propriation of $3,000,000 to equip volunteers from 
this State to defend the capitol of the country from 
threats which were made against it. I have no 
regrets to make for that vote. It was a duty im- 
posed upon me from which I could and would not 
absolve myself. I trusted that tho action of the 
government would be wise and conservative — that 
it would be defensive and not aggressive. I stated 
then that I would support the government in all 
just and wise measures of public defence. "Not one 
cent for aggressive coercion, but all for the defense 
of the capitol, the preservation of the govern- 
ment, and the wise and discreet execution of the 
laws." I feared then, from my conception of the 
policy of the Republican party, that it would at- 
tempt to enforce its policy, and make triumphant its 
principles, if legislative measures failed, by those of 
armed power. Men who were then regarded as 
"loyal" are now called secessionists. But the 
standard of patriotism has changed. It is no long- 
er the Union upon the Constitution, as illustrated 
in seventy years of greatness and glory, but the 
Union as it should be of the radical leaders of the 
Republican party — one resting upon armed subjuga- 
tion and not will — upon the ruins of States, and not 
by the consent of the States and living in the hearts 
of the people. Whoever will not approve and even 
applaud the progressive policy of those reckless and 
imbecile leaders who attempt to guide the govern- 
ment, are called secessionists. The Democratic par- 
ty has and never will countenance the doctrine of 
seeesaion. The doctrine of constitutional secesaioo 



10 



tWy regard as a "heresy" »Bd the recognition of 
■which would be destructive to our government. — 
There is undoubtedly secession by revolution, but 
one which should be resorted to only upon necessity. 
It is always a right when triumphant in its results. 
The people who resort to revolution for the redress 
of grievances and their liberation from oppression 
have always two alternative fates before them, 
which are triumph or defeat, and the synonyms of 
which are in this connection patriotism or treason. 
It is not a legal right. "It is a right against law 
and above law. It is a right against majorities as 
well as minorities." "It is," as Mirabeau express- 
ed it, "the tocsin of necessity alone that gives the 
signal when the moment is come for fulfilling the 
imperscriptable duty of resistance, a duty always 
imperative, whenever the Constitution is violated, 
always triumphant when the resistance is clearly 
just and national." I repeat that the Democracy 
do not justify the action of the Southern States. — 
They forsook us who had fought their battles, for 
they had none to fight in the South— in the day of 
our defeat. If they had been wise they would 
have remained in the Union, for then the present 
practical realization of the promises of the Republi- 
can party would have been impossible. But wheth- 
er secession be based upon constitutional authority, 
asjthe statesmen of the South allege, or upon only 
that of revolution, it is now a, fact, though it is not 
yet successful, and never will be if a wise policy is 
adopted. What has been the policy of the govern- 
ment in relation to the position of the Southern 
States ! It has not been that of conciliation since 
their action, to bring them back, as it was not to re- 
strain them when they threatened revolution. Its 
only policy has been that of "coercion by arms" — 
and by that not of a civilized nature, but barbaric 
— the avowed objects of which have been not to re- 
store them to their ancient sovereignty, but to make 
them subjugated provinces. 

As I stated at the outset of my remarks, we are 
approachiug that stage of the Revolution when the 
great questions which will arise in the triumph or 
defeat or compromise of this revolution will be the 
subjects of investigation and study. Where can 
we find more valuable materials for such investiga- 
tion than in the opinions of those great statesmen 
who framed the Constitution. Although circum- 
stances may have changed, and with those changes 
the plans and measures for the present, yet we may 
learn something from them as to the policy to be 
pursued in preserving or restoring the Union. I 
know that there are many dupes of the false 
logic of political leaders, who believe that the sys- 
tem of our government is a failure, and who desire 
one existing upon the principle of the centralization 
of authority, and supported by the "coercion of 
arms." But 

••The dead, yet soeptered sovereigns, who still role. 
Our epirite from iheir urns," 

expressed different views which at least demand 
our respect. 

Alexander Hamilton in the State Convention was 
compelled to protest against an undue exercise of 
ITedural authority. He aald : 

"The States can never lose thelrpoWers till the whole 
people of .America are robbed of their liberties. Tbtso 
muBi go together; they muit support each other, or meet 
a common late." 

If Hamilton had assumed the contrary position, 
Kew York State would not have adopted the Con- 
stitution, and would have remained out of the Union 



as a separate nation. These views were generally 
entertained by the members of the Convention from 
all of the States. It is interesting at this time 
when the modern ideas of the Union prevail, to read 
the opinions of our fathers as they are found in the 
paper of Mr. Madison and Elliott's debates. But it 
must be admitted that they did not foresee the eir- 
eumstances which characterized the commencement 
of this contest — the first gun beingfired by a State 
on a federal fort. But after the contest had com- 
menced their views should have been followed so 
far at least that the war should have been waged, 
as the people demanded, and as Congress declared 
it should be, for the rsstoration of the legitimate 
authority of the federal government, and not against 
the institutions of any State, "but that when the 
rebellion should be put down and the war at an end, 
each State should emerge from the ruins, with all 
its pristine rights and dignity complete, untouched 
and undiminished." 

I might cite the views of all the great framers of 
the Constitution to show at least that war alone as 
the means of a policy cannot restore the Union. War 
alone, every sensible man must admit, cannot re- 
store the Union, for it exists upon the "consent of 
the governed." I have an abiding faith, which 
never fails, that the Union will be restored. The 
inevitable result of the next presidential election — 
the triumph of the policy of the Democratic party 
— will restore it, when the people of the South ex- 
hausted like those of the North, will consent to re- 
turn to their old Union. But the war has not been 
carried on even under the pretence of the restora- 
tion of the "Union as it was." It has been to de- 
stroy a particular species of property — it has been to 
subjugate and exterminate a people by the policy of 
barbaric warfare. It has been to overthrow the 
sovereignty of the "loyal States," and to d stroy 
the liberties of the people of the North. But yet 
this has been the natural result of the success of 
the Republican party. It promised the overthrow 
of State sovereignty at the South, and the natural 
result has been the verification of the prophecy of 
Alexander Hamilton, that 

' The States can never lose their powers till the whole 
people of Americi^are robbed of their hbertiea." 

I do not refer to the revolted States, but to the 
dethronement of the local sovereignty of the North- 
ern States, and the loss of our own liberties. The 
licentious results of the siagZe policy of the Repub- 
lican party of the "coercion by arms" of States, no 
oje can forsee. 

THE DANGERS OF THE FUTURE. 

We are now, as I believe, at a point from which 
two piths diverge into two forteen futures — one ta 
centralized despotism, the other to anarchy. The' 
unsuccessful attempt to follow the former, will, 1 
fear, lead us in the latter. But there is yet time- 
to retrace our steps in that wide path in which our 
country had made and was making such a grand 
natural advance until the days of November, 1861. 
I appeal to history for the truth of the grand past,. 
and I appeal to the present for the sad realitiei^ 
and the threatened disasters of the future. Under 
the policy of the Republican party within less than 
two years, this nation, which was reaching the 
acme of civilization, has been relapsing into the 
moat ancient barbari^-^m as to the policy of war, and 
has modelled the administration of government after 
the most odious despotisms. At the commencement 
of the war, thousands of brave men, believing thai 



11 



it was for the cause of "a betrayed Union, and vio- 
. lated Constitution," grasped their arms and spran; 
into the "armies of the Union" at the call of the 
President. They enrolled themselves to fight for 
the honor of their national flag, but as the deluded 
followers of Mokanna, the false prophet, beheld 
when he raised the Silver Veil from his countenance 
in place of the anticipated celestial features of a 
God, merely the hideous feature* of a fiend, so they 
now behold that that flag was but a thin outer gauze 
covering the real emblem — the black flag on which 
is inscribed — Extermination to the people of the 
South and slavery to thosecf the North. Hundreds 
of thousands of them now sleep the last sleep under 
the Southern soil. Hundreds of thousands of them 
are maimed and crippled for life. The youngest, 
the noblest and the bravest have both met the same 
fate. There being no more who are willing to ofl'er 
themselves up as a holocaust to the imbecility of 
the administration, and to fight for the policy of a 
party which has been substituted for that of a na- 
tion, and which has for its result, thougU it may 
not be its avowed object — a San Domingo war of 
outrage and massacre of the defenceless women and 
children of our own race by slaves changed into de- 
mons of lust and blood, the Administration declares 
that the war must go on, if it has to be prosecuted 
ty armies of slaves, 

THE PEOPLE OF THE NORTH DIVIDED AS TO 

THE PuLICY OF THE WAR, AND THE 

WAR ITSELF. 

There is no doubt that the people of the Northern 
States are divided as to the war. It is the question 
which the States will settle, if they are any longer 
States in the political system 

" but the 
Tributes of the State, the States themselveB, 
To bind, to looce, to build and to destroy, 
In peace, in war to govern ; i av, to rule 
Their very fates, like some superior ttiing." 

seem to be assumed at present by the President. 

The people of the North are divided into three 
classes. There is oiie who are opposed to the pre- 
sent policy of the war, but who are in favor of its 
prosecution for, as they allege, the restoration of 
"the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it 
is." 

The second class is composed of those who are op- 
posed to the war, on the ground that war cannot 
restore the Union. 

In the third classs are embraced those who sup- 
port the Administration, whatever may be its poli- 
cy, who have followed it through all its changes of 
measures and of men, and who illustrate in their 
actions the formula of Archbishop Laud, "Passive 
obedience and non-resistance to the king," and 
who b3' their servile adulations of the President and 
his usurpations of State and personal rights, permit 
him to boast as the flatteries of the courtiers of 
Louis XIV extorted from him the exclamation — 
L'etat, c'est moi, and who say that the war must 
be prosecuted to the end, whatever may be the 
means employed, provided the result is reached. — 
What the result would be of such a policy I shall 
speak of hereafter. Those who belong to the first 
class are opposed to the present policy of the Ad- 
ministration, for the reason that even if war can 
restore the Union, the measures of the Administra- 
tion are opposed, not only to the rules of civilized 
warfare, but tend to excite the people of the revolt- 
ed States to desperation and to unite them in their 
struggle for independence. 



The Administration hag adopted the war policy 
of barbaric ages. It is well expressed by Chan- 
cellor Kent in his Commentaries : 

"The end of war is to ptocure by force the justice 
which caonot be otherwise obtained; and the law of na. 
tions allows the means requisite to the end. There is 
no limitation to the career of violence and ueftrucUou, 
if we follow the carlieut writers on thin subject who 
have paid too much deference to the maxims and prac- 
tices of the ancientB and the usages of the Gothic ages 
They have considered a state of man ai a dissolution of 
all moral ties, and a license for every kind of dinorder, 
and intemperate flerceness. An enemy was regarded as 
a criminal and an outlaw, -who had forfeited his rights, 
and whose life, liberty and property lay at the leet of the 
conquerors. Everything done against an enemy was 
held to be lawful. He might be destroyed, though un- 
armed and defenoelesa. Fraud might be employed, as 
well BB force, and force without any regard to the 
mean». But these barbarous rights of war have been 
queHtioned and checked In the piogrees of oirilizsition. 
fublic opinion, as it becomes enlightened and refined, 
condtmna all cruelly, and all wanton destruction of life 
and property aci equally useless and injurious, and it 
contro.B the violence and severity of war oy the energy 
and severity of its reproaches " 

* Kent Commeutaries, Lecture 5, p. 99. 

They regard the measures of the administration 
— especially the Prjclamation of Emancipation and 
the Confiscation bill, the objects of which are the 
game — as bein^ not only unconstitutional, unjust, 
and impolitic, but against all precedents, if not of 
all civilized governments, at least of that from 
which we derived our common law precedents. I 
can have no sympathy with Secession, nor with the 
government of the Confederate States, as my alle- 
giance is due only to my own State, and the Fede- 
ral government. But I assert that the people of 
the Southern States, and those portions where the 
protection of our government does not reach them, 
should not be stripped of their property, for render- 
ing their allegiance to the Confederate government, 
however irregular may be its form. It is not my 
intention to discuss the unconstitutionality of these 
measures, as I regard them but as the natural con- 
sequence of the triumph of the creed of the Repub- 
lican party — as the of&cial consummation of its de- 
signs and anticipated results. I cannot, however, 
refrain, in this conneetion, from quoting a few lines 
from the Commentaries of Blackstone. My pur- 
pose in so doing, is not in justification of the action 
of the Sonthorn States, but in condemnation of the 
policy of the administration, whose results must be 
to strengthen the revolution, and unite the Southern 
people in perpetual allegiance to the Confederate 
government: 

N .tional allegiance is therefore perpetual, and local 
temporary only; and that for this reason, evidently found- 
ed upon the nature of ihe government, that allegiance is 
a debt due from the euhjf:ct, upon an implied contract 
with the Prince, that so long: a' the one aff rds proteciioa 
so long the olh«r will demean himi'elf fai'hful'y. * * 
• • • From which deci ion Matthew Hale 

deduces this consequence, that thc.ugh there be an usur- 
per of the crown, yet it is treason f r any subject, wiiile 
the usurper is in full pos«eision of the soveregniy, to 
pricxice anything against l. is crown and dignity. There- 
fore, al hough iho trae Prince regain the Kovereignly, yet 
such altptnpti ag»iiut the uiurper (unless in detense or 
aid of ihe rn^htful King) hare been aftsrwards pun- 
ished with death,- bejause of the breach of the tem- 
porary allegiance which was due to hiin as King dt 
Jo'to. And apon this footing, afier Edward IV. received 
the crown, wr.ich had been lung: deiamed from l>is house 
by the line of Lanetsler, treason committed against 
Henry IV. was eapitaliy punished, though Henry had beett 
declared a usurper by Parliament. 

Was there ever a people, the subjects of an usur- 
pation, so forced by the imbeoilitj of the legitimate 



12 



government — to support and defend with their lives 
the govemnent which protected (hem, however ir- 
regular may have been its forms, or illegitimate 
the source of its authority, as the people of the 
Southern States. They behold in the Proclamation 
of Emarcipation and the Confiscation bill, measures 
which must destroy all desire at the South for the 
success of the cause of the Union; for that success 
will, under the sweeping provisions of these meas- 
ures, deprive them of their property and homes. — 
They are right when they declare that they cannot 
support the war under its present policy, for it is no 
longer even ostensibly, a "war for the Union." Mr. 
Stevens, the leader of the Kepublijan party in Con- 
gress, made this declaration : "That he would never 
consent to the restoration of the Union as it was." 
His Union is that one which would be the creative 
result of the policy of his administration and party. 
It cannot be a war for "the Constitution as it is," 
for that, sacred instrument has been superceded by 
the revolutionary measures of the President and 
Congress. And there is no predicting what meas- 
ure tbe administration may adopt, and for what ob- 
jects the war may be prosecuted. Revolutions 
march rapidly, and the administration is the repre- 
sentative of a revolutionary party. Its ori inal 
leaders, like the Girondists, the authors of the 
French Revolution, and the judges of the King, 
have been thrown aside, and the "radicals" — the 
same class as the Jacobins of that age — now shape 
the policy of the war, and guide the destinies of 
the country. And if they are permitted to prose- 
cute the war under their present and progressive 
policy, they will not only make a San Domingo of 
one half of the land, but they will destroy even 
the forms of State governments and personal liber- 
ties at the North. Michelet says, in his French 
Revolution, that, 

The sects which were the offspring of the Revolution, 
annulled ihe Revolution Itself; people became Constitu- 
ants, Montagnards, but the Revolutionists ceased to 
exist. 

So the Republican of 1860 — the simplo and hon- 
eet believer in the creed of Chicago — so the patri- 
otic War Democrat of 1861, who gave not only his 
thousands, but his sons, to the cause of what he 
believed to be the redemption of the Union — must 
be now, under the present standard of patriotism, 
which is a changing one, an emancipationist, an 
abolitionist,' an advocate of armies of negro slaves, 
of usurpations and dictatorship at the North, and 
whatever may be the new and progressive policy of 
the radical and revolutionary administration which 
he suppsrts. 

Thi; secoad class do not support the war, what- 
ever may be its policy, because they are opposed to 
the war as the means to restore the Union. The 
future will decide whether they were the "wise 
men" of the age, or not. 

THE TWO ANTAGONISTIC PRINCIPLES— CEN- 
TRALIZATION AND LOCAL SOVEREIGNTY. 

As I stated at the outset of my remarks, there 
are two antagonistic principles of government which 
are contending for mastery — one or the other of 
which must triumph. I speak of this contest at, the 
North — the "loyal North." The policy of the ad- 
ministration, though it may he disguised under the 
cry of safety for the Republic, is yet shaped for the 
former. I believe that the triumph of that princi- 
ple in our government is as lamentable as the disso- 
lution of the Union. It is more, for the Union can 
he reconstructed; but ft froo people, history tell* 



us, who lose their liberties, seldom regain them.* 
In fact, in its triumph, tbe Union is destroyed. It 
is the old principle of ccntralizationm government 
which has been the seed of destruction to so many 
nations, as it has been the weapon of oppression to tho 
people. It destroyed the Ancient Republics, upon 
the ruins of which were erectad the rule of the Con- 
sular-Dictators and Imperators of Rome, and tho 
tyrants of Athens. The antagonism of our Eng- 
lish ancestors to this principle, was the key note of 
all their popular struggles. The Barons of England 
extorted the abnegation of it from King John, at 
the points of their swords, when he in Magna Charta 
granted local sovereignty and personal protection. 
J ,hn Hampden asserted it when he refused to pay 
the local ship tax imposed by the king. Charles 
the First, because he failed to comprehend the 
odiousness of this principle to the people, lost his 
throne and mounted the scaffold. And Louis XVI. 
followed him a century later, for asserting to the 
people the pentralization of absolut", power in hina- 
self. All the great writs of English freedom which 
we believed were our inheritance, were the fruits of 
the defeat of this principle, and our fathers believed 
when they triumphed over the attempts of the king 
and parliament to centralize the local government 
of tlie Colonies in themselves, that they had buried 
this principle on this Continent. Only once in our 
history has it been asserted — under the administra- 
tion of the elder Adams, in the "Alien and Sedi- 
tion" laws, by the Federal party which had the 
seat of its power in the New England States, and 
which tue people of the Southern and Middle States 
overthrew. Elliott, in his "History of Liberty," 
writes of it as follows: 

Over ttie ages of old, there broods, from first to 
last a giant shape, conjured up by human laws. — 
Wherever men came together, upon the Eastern plams 
or around the Western citadel, they dwell m the shadow 
of centralization. This is one ot the two systems by 
whic'i s()ciety IS constituted The other is Union. Cen- 
irolizaiion binds men together. Bul.il binds men toge- 
ther to the benefit of the minority. The mBJority is op- 
pressed. 

Kosouth saidj in one of his speeches, in this 
country : 

I hope tlint the great French nation will soon fucceed 
to estabhsii e true Republic. But I have come to tho 

* Since delivering the above speech, I bavs read tho 
following reiiitrks of >*enalor Harris, of this State, in 
the U S. Senate, whi' h are worthy of attention, as from 
a distinguished Republican: 

" In this counirv, even in our utmost need, and England 
with her many wars and often jcarciiy of men, never 
resortea to this despotic measure (the Ccnscripiii.n bill). 
1 1 was a mode 'if raising armies only used by despoil, 
hut never by Republican governments; and the princi- 
ple, if adopted, would p ovidi large standing armies 
whicli itliriost inevitably lead todespuUsm. In a govern, 
me: t of deligHted power, and which rested upon the con- 
sent of the governed, it was inexpedient anj niinecei- 
sary. Cougress liad not the piwer, under the Constitn- 
tion, thus to destroy the militia of the State, which the 
Con«iiiuiion provided for, as a reserved ;orce of the 
Union. If this measure was adopted, there would be 
centralized power. He would not say that the President 
wou'd make bad use of this power, but he ob ected to 
the principle. It was alwa)S dangerous to eentraliso 
.sBCh immense ;>ower under one man — an ambitious m»n. 
Might not ihe fate of France be thai of this country? — 
Our forefathers saw the d.tngem. and wisely placeil 
cheek! upon a too great ccBiralization of power. It has 
been said that the life nf the nation was at stake He 
believed that tht liberties of a frtt ■people were of more 
importance than anything else, and it he were to choose 
between am Imperial Government, stretching over the 
whole country ar.d including Mexico and Canada, and 
two or three separate rcpablies, be would have no he«- 
tation in ehoosing the latter." 



13 



coBviciJon that for freedom there is no duration jn cen- 
tralization, which IS a legacy of ambitious men. To be 
conquerors, power must be centralized; but to be a 
nation, selt-governmeiil must reign in fam lies, villages, 
cities, count es, stales. As power now is lodged in France, 
the goveri ment has in us hands a half a million o{ men 
under that war di?cip;ine which is neei'ed in a standing 
army. «*♦*»** 
Now, genilpmen, is it not clear that with sucli authority 
and force — not to become dauger'^us to liberty, every 
President must needs lo be a Washington. And Wash- 
ingtons are not so thickly strewn around. Woe to ihe 
country whose institutions are such ihat their freedom 
depends upon the personsl character of one man. B.; 
he the best man in the world, lie will not overcome the 
osseniial repugnance of his position to Freedom. When 
France abandons thi« eentra!iz«tion, and carries out her 
own principles of "Liberiy, Equally, Fraternity " by 
loial self govtrnmcnt, she will be ihe great basis of Euro- 
pean Republics. I lake it that the right to east a vote 
for the election of a President every four years, does not 
exhaust the sovereign righls oi a people. A people de- 
ciding about Its own raaileis, must be everywhere mas- 
ter* of lis own faie, in villages, communes, as much as 
in electing us chiet officer. 

Was there ever a more daring assertion of this 
principle than by the party who control the Federal 
Government? I warn the people that there is more 
danger to their lilierties than ever menaced a free 
people. Those who are in favor of it, and there 
are many honest men tinder the influence of de- 
signing leaders who are, should, if they desire to 
make it triumphant, support the administration in 
the most vigorous and extreme measures, and most 
despotic policy, by the overthrow of State sovereign- 
ty and the violation of all personal rights at the 
North, by the advocacy of the usurpation and con- 
centration of all powers in the Federal Government, 
by the conscription of those ULwilling to volunteer, 
and the incarceration of the opjionents of the policy 
of the administration. 

The other principal is local sovereignty, known 
to us more generally by the term of " State 
sovereignly." It is the principle upon which the 
American Revolution was founded. It has been 
called the Anglo-Saxon principle from the jealous 
devotion of that people to it. Lieber says in his 
" Civil Liberty" that, 

" In England we fi^^l see applied in practice auC on a 
«-rand scale, the idea which came or g mall y from the 
NeUicrla! ds, that liberty must not be a boon of the gov- 
ernrneni, but that a must derive iis righls from the peo- 
p.e." 

This local sovereignty, within defined limits, 
exists in England, in counties, shires, cities, towns, 
and even in the cottage of the peasant. Lord 
Chatham expressed it thus ; 

" Every man's house ii , his castle. Why? bcpuse it 
is Burrouudf.d bya moat and deiended by a whil? No 
It may be a siraw-buili hut; the wind may whisilo uround 
itj the rain may enter it, but the king of Eng aril can- 
nel!" 

Our fathers brought this principle of government 
■with them, and deiended it against king and par- 
liament, who attempted to wrest their local sov- 
ereignty from them, and to centralize all the con- 
trol over the colonies in themselves. The Union can 
never be restored without the recognition of thit 
principle — the promised violation of it was the cause 
of this war. I did not support the policy of the 
Republican party before its triumph. I cannot sup- 
port its measures now — the result of the triumph 
of that policy. The measures of tbu administra- 
tion are but the realization of the policy which the 
Republican party promised, should be that of its 
chief representative if he were elevated to the. 
Presidency. That policy was to be interventioH 
in the domestic institutions, and the overtbiow ( 



of the sovereignty of the Southern States. — 
Few of those who enrolled themselves un- 
der the standard of that party expected that it 
would be exercised except as to the institution of 
slavery. It is not my purpose to attempt to prove 
that such measures as the " arbitrary arrests," 
the imposition of " martial law" over the "loyal 
States;" the " suspension of the habeas corpus," 
and the obnoxious measures of the administration, 
are illegal and unconstitutional. The most gifted 
jurists of the country have, in the most elaborate 
arguments proven the affirmative of the proposition. 
I regard them but as the natural consequence of 
the tt iumph of the great principle — the essence 
of the creed of the Republican party. 

The advocacy of the application of this insiduous 
doctrine by the Federal Government, so totally 
repugnant to the essence as well as the theory of 
our polity, and the consent by a majority of the 
people of the North, that it should be applied as to 
the Southern State, has resulted in the overthrow 
of their respective local sovereignties and the loss 
of their personal liberties, as the necessary conse- 
quence of the former. 

All the great inalienable rights of the people as 
defined and enumerated in the Constitution of the 
United States, and the several States, have been, 
by the " arbitrary power'" of the Federal Govern- 
ment, wrested from them. I need not repeat what 
those great rights are. They are known to us, as 
we have always enjoyed them. Not the Federal 
Constitution, but what has been called the '- neces- 
sity of the hour," has been the rule and guide of the 
action of the administration and a servile Congress. 
The State Constitutions have become mere nulli- 
ties under the exercise of the arbitrary and usurped 
power of the Federal administration. Summary ar- 
rests and summary incarcerations, have been sub- 
stituted for the arrest by the warrant of law, and 
the preliminary examination. Lettres dc cachet 
of the style of the regime of Louis XV, issued by 
the officers of the administration, and their subordi- 
nates, and summary condemnation without trial or 
even explanation, have been substituted for the 
legal processes, as ordained in the Constitution, the 
embodied reproduction of the writs of English 
freedom. Provost Marshals, support 'd by military 
power, have been appointed in the different " loyal 
States," 10 enforce its arbitrary and despotic 
measures. The Governors of the States, unless they 
resist and are supported by the people, have been 
virtually deposed as their States have been de- 
prived of their sovereignty. AVhile our armies 
have been contending, as they believe, for the 
" restoration of the Union," it has been destroyed 
at the North, and in it* place has been erected a 
gigantic, consolidated despotism. There is no 
longer a President of the United States, but there 
is a dictator, assuming the right to exercise more 
power than the Emperor of Austria or the Czar of 
Russia. If Napoleon HI attempted to assume such 
arbitrary power, he would raise a revolution which 
would rock the imperial throne to its centre. 
The supporters of the different measures of the ad- 
ministration do not claim that they are constitu- 
tional. They admit them to be extra-constitution- 
al, but necessary as the war itself for the preser- 
vation of the government, for " the life of the Na- 
tion,-' toi out nationality. This is the argument 
which ha* been ever used by usurpers and their 
parasites. Where was there ever one that did not 
justify his usurpation by this plea, even though he 
were obliged to wade through blood to obtain 
the desired power. The dictators of Rome; the 
tyrants of Athens; the Protector of England; the 



14 



first Napoleon and his sucoeesor, the present Em- 
peror of France, nsed this plea. 
• The Union to-day exists onW im name at the 
Worth. It has been destroyed by those to whom 
its preservation was entrusted. Upon its debris 
they hare erected a gigantic, consolidated govern- 
ment, all its power issuing from a Federal head; 
despotic and usurped power, the object and result 
of which must be, unless popular agencies prevent, 
the fate of all free Republics whiah have pre- 
ceded it. 

I owe a fealty to the Union as represented by the 
Federal Government, but to a Federal Administra- 
tion, which distorts the sacred and ordained pur- 
poses of the Union, and which usurps the sovereign 
rights of the States, I owe no allegiance. I prefer 
the Union of Madison, Hamilton, Ellsworth and 
their as.-ociates in the great work of its establish- 
ment, to that polity which the Republican party de- 
mands, and for the substitution of which the policy 
of the war has been changed. There are many who 
desire to have a strong consolidated government, 
some from interest and power, and others from honest 
preferences. There has not been a speech made in 
this or the upper House by a Republican member, 
which has not been an open or indirect advocacy of 
such a polity. We read such sentiments expressed 
in the journals of the day. 

"Tiie repre?eni3iive pyitcm i> laughed at, a«d the 
id M of mo 'arcliial or political tluolatism is draped anew, 
and worshipned by ihnus;iHd» as if it were the latest 
avaiar of their political QniV 

Such a government would be undoubtedly respeted 
and feared abroad, as great empires are, but it 
would also resemble theai in that it would be op- 
pressive and odious at home, resting upon military 
power, and only to be overthrown by the giant form 
of armed revolution I prefer that one which blesses 
its own subjects to that which oppresses them, 
though it may terrify other nations. I prefer that 
one which is based upon the assertion of our fathers, 
that "governments derive their just powers from 
the con.sent of the governed," and not that which 
the new political teachers would found upon the 
maxim of " divine right and passive obedience" of 
George Jeffrys — A Deo Rex, a Rege Lex, and 
which entrenches itself upon the absolute decrees 
of the Stuarts and Bourbons of past centuries, and 
the Romanofls and Hapsburgs of this age. I am 
still a believer in the former, weak and defenceless 
though ir may be, as alleged by the advocates of 
consolidation, but strong and united, when the 
compromises and principles of which it is the off- 
spring are respected by its rulers; that government, 
which, when more powers are demanded by the exi- 
gencies of the hour, appeals to the people, the 
natural and true source of all power, and not like 
the latter to absolute decrees and usurpations — the 
ultima ratij regum- 

In the return by the Administration, to the for- 
mer of the two ]iriDciples, I can find the only hope 
for the restoration of the Union, not merely in its 
form, but in its essence. The Union has been 
virtually overthrown at the North by the Administra- 
tion, that is, if it is based on the Constitution, for 
there is scarcely a section of it which has not been 
violated. 

THERK CAN BE NO J-UBJUGATION, BUT THE 
REVOLUTION CAN BE CONQUERED. 

The polioy of the war has been shanged, aa has 

been the nature of our GoTernment. It is no longer 

for the ' 'restoration of the Union," whioh the Demo- 

ratie party lupported, hut it hai beteue one, as 



admitted by the supporters of the Administration, 
for the destruction of slavery, the extermina- 
tion of the people of the revolted States, and the 
colonization of iheir States by Northern men. — 
These objects maybe carried out, for there may be 
nothing impossible to the great Northern race. 
The resources, the mi'itary character of the people 
of the Nofth, and their bravery hare astonished the 
worlds But 1 have never faltered in my concep- 
tion for what ends this war should be, if war is the 
means. I have my own peculiar views, based on a 
study of the opinions of the great men who framed 
the Constitution, as to the policy of "coercion by 
arms," ojtZy, as the means; but the people of the 
North decided that such should be the policj', and 
when its object was, as they demanded it should 
be, the restoration of the Union, upon the 
Constitution, I never threw obstacles in the way 
of the Government. But a different policy has been 
substituted — one which it is not even claimed is 
for that purpose. It has now become a war to carry 
out the principles of a party, and not those of the 
Union — it is a war fought ontside the Constitution, 
to found a new nationality. I prefer that policy, 
which sent with the armies, instead of the "Procla- 
mation of Emancipation," to arouse servile insur- 
rections, and the "Confiscation Bill," which deters 
the revolutionists of the South from renewing their 
fealty to the Federal Government, and forces them 
to sustain the Confederate Government, however 
irregular it may be, which protects their property, 
the declaration made by Congress, after thei first 
battle, and defeat on the plains of Manassas. I 
have an abiding faith in the restoration of the 
Union. I can speak for my party, when I say that 
it will never be content with anything less than tbe 
old Union, including all the revolted States. How 
will it be restored? By arms? Not by arms only. 
I am not in favcr of disbanding our armies. What- 
ever may have been the cause of this w.ar, however 
great may have been the original error of it, as some 
allege, however unjustifiable it may be by Con- 
stitutional authority, we are now at war. I ex- 
pect it will go on. What will be the the measure of 
it will depend upon the policy of the Administration, 
and the temper of the people. But, I have no hesi- 
tation in saying that the restoration of the Union 
by the "coercion of arms" only, w-.U be an im- 
pusibtlity. If our armies conquer all the revolted 
States, and hold them by "military power," will 
the Union be restored? No! For that Union was 
made and has existed by the "consent of the States." 
This is the essence of the Union — its living force — as 
was declared by New York State, as the condition 
of agreeing to the adoption of the Constitution — the 
bond of the Union. Tlie forms of the Union may bo 
exhibited to foreign nations. There may be no 
blockade of the Southern coast — its ports may be 
open to tbe commerce of the world. Our gun boats 
may open the Mississippi, to the free navigation 
of all the people who live on its banks. But it will 
not be the Union, living in the hearts of the people, 
and embracing all the States by their sovereign con- 
sent. The name may still be that, by which it was 
known to the nations who had beheld its re- 
splendant banner; and heard of the great Republic, 
the "United States of America." But thej' will 
not be States united by their sove?;eign consent, but 
subjugated, if you succeed in that policy, and held by 
armed power. It will be a Union in name only, such 
at those of Poland to Russia, Hungary and Venetian 
Italy to Austria. It will not be that Union, neither 
in its history, purposes or principles, which was 
established ia 1789, and whose record reaches to 



15 



of the Administration, as proclaimed by its leadin^ 
Bupporters, should be triumphant, a gigantic con- 
solidated despotism. Subjugation is seldom the re- 
sult of war. There is not an instance of history of 
such a country as that which stretches from the Po- 
tomac to the Kio Grande, and from the Northern 
frontier of the revolted States, to the Gulf, and in- 
habited by such a large population of such a spirited 
and warlike race — the same composite race to which 
we belong, however different may have been theor- 
ignal and parent races — provided so abundan tly with 
all th« modern material of war, and defending a 
•ountry whieh from its national adaptation to de- 
fense may be said to be, as Thucydides the ancient 
historian described Greece, "all armed with iron,'' 
subjugated. Is Poland, a little province in compari- 
son with that of the Southern States, subjugated? 
Thespirit of Kosciuzko, still "walks the Carpathian 
heights." Poland to-day is in arms ! Is Hungary 
subjugated? She may be in arms to-morrow! Is 
Venetian Italy subjugated? The Empire of Aus- 
tria has become bankrupt in its endeavors to hold 
them by armed power? Such a result would not be 
the Union ! It would be the human form without 
the heart to give the pulsations of life, and the soul 
to give illustrations to that life, by all the elements 
of mental beauty. It would be a religion without a 
creed! It would be a temple without a God ! Our 
armies may marsh from the Potomac to the Gulf of 
Mexico, aud then without the consen'. of tho people 
there will be, not only no Union, but no subjugation. 
The great Napoleon, and we have no Generals like 
him, marched tlrough Spain, but he left every day 
a hostile country behiud him. That wonderful man 
overthrew all Europe. He was at one time the 
Xmperor, not merely of France, but of Europe. — 
He died, and tho "map of Europe returned to its 
ori.inal place." Even the trophies of Rome were 
restored. The policy of subjugation, extermination 
and colinization, avowed by some, is an impossi- 
bility. Even if it were a jjossibility, such a resuU 
would be no honor to us, but to our historical in- 
famy. But the views of those theorists, who be- 
hold the exterminition of a race, the division of 
their estates among the courtiers, and the favorite 
Generals of the Administration, and tae coloniza- 
tion if the lands of tho South by the Northern 
soldiers, will never be realized. 

The war will go on. The President has been in- 
Tested with absolute power to prosecute it, and one 
party declares that it will support him, whatever 
may be his policy. But the map of tho Union will 
return two years from now to its original place. I 
heliev* that it oould be returned bow, if tho Ad- 
jainistvation with its armies in the field, would say 
to the suffering and mourning, but still the deter- 
mined people of the South — "The North has but 
one policy — the restoration of the Union in its in- 
ttfrity, the provisions of the Constitution shall be 
• ^forced as to your institutions, and the rights of 
your States shall be inviolate." Th« revoiution 
»a% then bt corquered. Unless this be its policy, 
the glory of restoring the Union will b« reserved for 
that party, whose history is that of the eountry in 
the days of its peace, prosperity and greatness, at 
well as its Union. But this maybe compromise ! 
Iti» an unhappy word in these days, when apostate 
followers of the " Prince of Peaee" «ry out, 
from the altar, "war to the knife, and the knife to 
th* hiU." It was an uuhappy word in this Room 
two y«ars ago this month. I recollect, a« though it 
war* but yesterday, the reply made by the dit- 
tlBjCuiihed leader of the Kepabliean party, of the 



1861. It will be, it must be, If the present policy] Legislature, a gentleman of just and liberal tea- 
,xL- 4 j_;_:..__^.-._ , • ,1 ,.,.:,, denoies, to the sneering opposition made by one of 

his political colleagues to the endorsement of the 
Crittenden resolutions. Two years of bloody eivil 
war have not effaced that reply from my memory ! 
It was as follows : 

"When the burly bnrly's done, 
When the hauls i« lost or won, 

there must be compromise." Compromise is 
the result of all contests, unless there be 
subjugation, which x is very rare. I beheld Na- 
poleon III. start from the city of Paris to place 
himself at the head of the most magnificent army 
which ever trod the earth. He declared that "Italy 
shall be free, from the Alps to the Adriatic !" He 
won the battles of Magenta and Solferino. But as 
he looked upon the last battle-field and beheld its 
vast circumference crowded with the ghastlv forms 
of his brave soldiers, he asked himself whether the 
repetition of such sanguinary contests were worth 
the anticipated result. He foresaw that the ulti- 
mate result of a contest with such a great military 
power a; that of Austria, though all his battles 
might be victories, must be a compromise. In a 
tent on the hill of Villafranea a treaty was made 
for the future peace of Europe, as all ttie great con- 
tests of Europe have been compromised by treaties. 
I want a compromise upon the Constitution — one 
only which restores the Union. That result can, I 
confidently believe, be attained by a wise and just 
policy. I believe that t.ie people of the South are 
tired of this fratricidal war. I do not mean the 
leaders, the contractors and generals, any more 
than their compeers at the North; but the people, 
who are fighting, as they believe, for their homes, 
and their property. The returned soldiers of our 
armies will tell you that those of the Southern 
armies desire peace, and say "with oar two armies- 
we can conquer the world." 

THE FUTURE. 

Two hostile armies if the present policy of the 
Administration continues, and unless other agencies 
intervene, will, two years from last November, face 
each other. But armed revolution will dissolve as 
rapidly as the snow on the mountain tops at the first 
breath of summer, when it is whispered by the sol- 
diers from the Northern lines across to the warriors of 
the Southern lines, of the great political revolution 
at the North, and that the reign of abolitionism is 
over. The reign of secession will then expire. And 
upon the ruins of despotism, both at the North and 
South, will be seen, as the clouds of war are dis- 
pelled by the purer political atmosphere, the Old 
Union, resting upon its ancient basis of the Consti- 
tution, and supported by the pillars of the States. 
Whatever may be the result of the congests which 
may intervene between now and then, whether they 
be lost ur won, there will then be a compromise, 
which will be in the return of the people of both 
the North and South to their old fealty to the Con- 
stitution. 

I frankly admit that I long for the morning which 
shall usher in the day of peace, and the restoration 
oftheUnioo. "When I read the violent denuncia- 
tions of "peace" in the radical journals of the day, 
if I did not mix among the people, in the public 
thoroughfares, on the crowded marts and in the paths 
of daily life, I would be led to believe that the 
philosopher was right when he said that " peaee is 
the dream of the wise, but war is tho history of 
mankind." But however it may be in the other 
parts of the State, I kaow that the hearts of the 
peopla of the great metropolis, of which I have the 



16 



honor in part to represent, are throbbing for the 
faintest hope of peace with the restoration of the 
Union; and that their p"ayer is that the adminis- 
tration will adopt that policy which will ensure those 
results. The weapon oi intimidation is being used 
against those who doinand some other method of re- 
storiu<? the Union that that of the administration. 
It is the old weapon. "Intimidation, " says Lord 
Urougham, " is the never-failing resource of the 
partisans of revolution iu all ages." It is now not 
only the weapon of the revolutionists at the North, 
but of the contractors and place men who cluster 
around the Administration. The "Hartford^Conven- 
tion" has, as a threat upon me as aa opponent of 
the present policy of the war, no effect. There is a 
difference in a lori;ign and a civil war — between that 
Vfhich meets a strange enemy on the field, of a dif- 
ferent race, and speaking an unknown tongue, and 
that which is wa^ed around our own hearthstones, 
and substitutes for the holy household gods the 
malignant furies of domestic hate and strife. 

All the Democratic party asks, whatever may be 
the individual differences of its members,, is that 
the Administriition shall change its policy from that 
of a party, which is to-day in a minority in the 
" loyal States," to that of the people, and that if 
the war i.s to go on, it shall be, if it can be, for the 
restoration of the Union, and not for its destruction 
and the erection upon its ruins at the North of a 
consolidated despotism. Be assured of this how- 
ever, that the iJemocratic party will not permit 
either the dissolution of the Union, nor the destruc- 
tion of its forms, nor the violation of the two great 
assertions of the Constitution — the Sovereignty of 
the Stw es and Personal Rights. We believe that 
there are leading men in the councils of the nation, 
who, if they cannot succeed in their war policy, 
prefer a Northern Kepublic to the restoration of the 
Union. No matter how mighty and prosperous 
thej may vision this Northeru Kepublic t« us, wo 



will not permit them to bequeath the wealth of, 
divide the power of, and sacrifice the prestige of the 
Union between t>vo distinct and antajjonistic Repub- 
lics. History repeats itself in parallels; and their 
fate will be written io a parallel to those who have 
attempted, but tailed to reach the giddy heights of 
usurped posver, or who, having scaled them, have 
been cast down by the giant form of revolution. I 
doubt sometimes whether the most flagrant con- 
spirators who sit in the Senate House expect to be 
tried before the "tribunal of a free people," to be 
there adjudged by the inexorable lawvi of popular 
retributive justice. 

The Democratic party will restore the Union, as 
it was able to preserve it. Upon its ensign is in- 
scribed, erea rmid the iitorms of battle, the 
maxim — 

Conciliation called the Union into being — simple aad 
even-handed justice will preserve it forever. 

In the spirit of that maxim the great men of the 
infant age of the Kepublic were imbued, and the 
words of which should be inscribed upon the walls of 
every legislature, as upon those of some of tho 
courts of justice of England is inscribed the maxim 
of law and equity — Audi alteram partem, ! so 
that it " may be kept in perpetual remember- 
ance.-' It has no sympathy with the barbaric war- 
cry, which resounded on the fertile plains of Italy 
centuries ago, and, in the triumph of those who 
uttered it, was only destruction, and who left no 
traces of civilization and State forms, and which is 
now the prevailing war-cry of the Republican party, 
the triumph of which will be a parallel in result to 
the triumph of the Gothic hordes — the faa victix! 
But in the spirit of the former, it will restore the 
Union of the States, and make it again the happi- 
ness, the pride and exultation of its piiople, and 

Siill a mark to fjuide the nations on, 
I Like a tall waich-iower flashing o'er the deep. 



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